Page 58 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

58 from Italy to the Canary Islands

The mystery of the sailor:

Lanzarotto Malocello in the collective

consciousness

hen we have little information about
a person, we perceive the need to
fill the void on that person’s life.
Sometimes just one word can light the way, with
a knock-on effect that thus draws us into incon-
ceivable worlds, of which we would never have
dreamt. Places which are, of course, nothing other
than words.
One of the many ironies of History is that we
can revisit a Roman emperor, whether from the
Malocello
period of splendour or even the period of decline family crest.
and downfall, and write fairly well about him, as
though we were actually even able to question him, and yet we perceive
that feeling of “void” for a person “closer” to us. In the case of Lanzarotto
Malocello, we have a strong perception of how fragile is our knowledge
th
of his life. This person lived in the 14 century, i.e. over one thousand
years after any Roman emperor, and yet, in his case, we are hanging on to
that small mosaic of information which surfaces here and there, fragments,
notes, information salvaged from who knows which buried archive.
Moreover, it is true that working on fragile data allows us to stir our
minds, which otherwise rest on a safe and stable bed of established facts and
information which can often bloat a description, the course of an existence.
It may seem strange, but we feel a certain joy when faced with this lack
of information, because we can count on nothing but that small amount
that we have; everything will be down to us and our ability to piece togeth-
er the fragments, to establish the origin and the end and, finally, to wisely
augment this information, these facts we have happened upon. Having in-
ternalised, of course, that handful of scenes which have already become
common heritage, we have to foster what we have at our disposal, in line
with the truth.